(a project of Mirravision Trust, Financed by Auroshakti Foundation)

A Psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo's

The Life Divine

Book II

The Knowledge and the Ignorance-The Spiritual Evolution

Chapter 13

Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the ignorance

Part I

Ignorance as a subordinate phenomenon

How can Ignorance exist in an integralist vision of Reality if the One and Many are aware of each other and exist in each other and both are surpassed in a sweeping movement? Ignorance then can come as a "subordinate phenomenon" (CWSA 21-22, pg.602) by some concentration of consciousness focused on a partial knowledge excluding the rest. There may be a concentration of One to the exclusion of the Many or a concentration on the Many excluding the One or of the individual being in oneself to the exclusion of both the One and rest of the Many. Or there may be a general rule of exclusive concentration that happens in Prakriti, the force of the active being instead of in the true self. (Ibid)

Ignorance is not natural

In the Integral Brahman, we have to consider the One and the Many simultaneously for "by the Many we mean the same divine Self in all, individualised indeed, but still one in conscious being with all in a single universality and one too with the original and transcendent Being. Ignorance is therefore not the natural character of the consciousness of the soul...it is the outcome of some particularizing action in the executive Conscious-Force when it is absorbed in its works and forgetful of self and of the total reality of the nature". (Ibid, pg.603) This action does not represent the whole but concentrates on a partial experience, oblivious of the rest. Ignorance is therefore "Nature's purposeful oblivion of the Self and the All" (Ibid) in order to do something in the outer existence.

Different poises of Tapas

Sri Aurobindo views the Reality or Sachchidananda as Sat-Chit-Shakti-Ananda. The Chit-Shakti is always present as a concentration of consciousness, Tapas. This concentration is an awareness in itself or on an object who is in some way nothing but itself. This concentration of Tapas is present in four poises:

(a) The concentration may be essential, and is "at one end the superconscient Silence and at the other end the Inconscience";

(b) The concentration may be integral, "the total consciousness of Sachchidananda, the supramental concentration";

(c) The concentration might be a total-multiple or part-multiple and is the "method of the totalizing or global overmental awareness"; and

(d) The concentration might be single-pointed in one centre; it is separative and "the characteristic nature of the Ignorance". (Ibid, pg.603-604)

An exclusive concentration on anything is then not a denial of the Spirit's awareness, it is one form of the self-gathering power of Tapas. But an exclusive concentration holds back behind it the rest of self-knowledge. It could be aware of the rest all the time yet act as if unaware of it; that does not qualify for a state of Ignorance. But if it constructs a wall of exclusion limiting itself to a single domain so that it is aware only of that to the exclusion of everything else outside itself, "then we have a principle of self-limiting knowledge which can result in a separative knowledge and culminate in a positive and effective ignorance". (Ibid, pg.604)

The hidden sea-the subliminal self

The energy in the outer being is like a stream that takes the appearance of personality and its workings. But actually there is a hidden sea behind this outer stream which is aware of the stream but of which the stream is unaware. "That sea is the subliminal self, the superconscient, the subconscient, the intraconscient and circumconscient being, and holding it all together the soul, the psychic entity". (Ibid, pg.605) It is this hidden sea and not the superficial stream that does all the action. It is the hidden sea which is the source of all movement and not the conscious wave in the stream which it projects. That sea is the real self, the integral conscious being. But the wave of the stream is not essentially ignorant. It is actually self-oblivious as it is too absorbed within itself to note anything else. It cannot concentrate on anything else other than the movement with which it is preoccupied. "A limited practical self-oblivion, not an essential and binding self-ignorance, is the nature of this exclusive concentration which is yet the root of that which works as the Ignorance". (Ibid, pg.605-606)This exclusive concentration of consciousness in its self-oblivious poise is the first absorption.

A second case of exclusive absorption of consciousness occurs when the human being, living a superficial life, pursues the habit of living in the present, from moment to moment. Though he is projected into the present by his past workings, he is ignorant of the past except for a small part to which he is linked by memory. And he is ignorant about the future which he anticipates only. But all this is an action of the superficial ignorance. The true consciousness of the inner being holds the past and projects it at times into the superficial conscious being which is the true rationale of karma. And there is a part of the inner being that is open to the future, "a prospective as well as a retrospective Time-sense, Time-vision, Time-perception". (Ibid, pg.606) Something is there in the inner being which lives as Trikaladristi, indivisibly in the three times and holds the future ready for manifestation. But the superficial being lives in the present and is related not to the infinite course of Time but to a succession of moments. We have then a second case of absorption, a second exclusive concentration which limits the being.

Thus the human being is a product of the moment. He does not belong to the past with which he is linked by memory. He does not belong to the future with which he is linked through anticipation. Yet there is a continuous ego-sense running through the three times. (Ibid) His involvement with the moment is not the whole truth of the being but a truth in its positive part, in its negative part it is an ignorance. The conscious life of man proceeds along a half-true and half-false knowledge - an ignorance. He is oblivious of the real truth of himself. His real self behind his superficial self is the true determinator of everything; his superficial self erects a superficial ignorance that colours his present moment. One is ignorant of one's past lives before birth as well as of the future after death. "Yet all that he forgets is contained, present and effective, in the all-retaining integral consciousness within him". (Ibid, pg.607)

Shift from active self-oblivion to deeper self-oblivion

The superficial man living from moment to moment plays many parts in life and becomes through exclusive concentration or absorption the exclusive actor, the poet or the soldier and his success depends on the completeness with which he can put aside the rest of himself and live only in his immediate work even though that rest is present all the time at the back of his consciousness. However, "the mind can dissolve its concentration and go back from its work at any time to the consciousness of the larger self of which this was a partial action". (Ibid, pg.608) In other words, he can shift from the active self-oblivion in works to the deeper self-oblivion of his inner and larger being. The superficial man cannot go wilfully to the real man within himself but can do that under exceptional circumstances as a fruit of arduous self-training. That he still can go back shows the difference to be phenomenal and not essential. In both cases the same movement of exclusive concentration works though under different circumstances and different denouements.

The power of exclusive concentration is not confined to the type of working of one's larger self but extends to the complete self-forgetfulness in the particular action engaged by the superficial being at the moment. The actor in moments of great intensity forgets he is an actor and completely identifies with the role he is playing, forgetting the real man who is playing it. Similarly, someone overcome by intense anger forgets himself and becomes anger for the time being. "This is as far as self-forgetfulness can go in the normal active human psychology; for it must return soon to the wider self-aware consciousness of which this self-forgetfulness is only a temporary movement". (Ibid, pg. 609)

The light of the secret conscious Being

The power of carrying the movement of exclusive concentration reaches its absolute point, not in human unconsciousness but in the inconscience in material Nature. (Ibid) This inconscience is no more real than the ignorance of exclusive concentration for in every form there is a secret soul, a secret will and intelligence without whose Conscious-Force or Tapas, no work of Nature could be done. What is actually inconscient is Prakriti, "the motional action of the energy absorbed in the working" (Ibid, pg.610) bound in a sort of trance or swoon of concentration so that it cannot go the real self -the integral conscious being and its force. Prakriti, the executive force becomes unaware of the Purusha, the Conscious-Being at first but becomes slowly aware with the evolutionary emergence of consciousness from the swoon of the Inconscience. And Purusha consents to assume the role that Prakriti gives it to assume -"it seems to become the inconscient, the physical being, the vital being, the mental being : but in all these it remains still in reality itself; the light of the secret conscious Being supports and informs the action of the inconscient or emergingly conscious energy of Nature." (Ibid)

- By Dr. Soumitra Basu